


Changes

by RandomTVJunk



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Stan and Eddie are still alive, a mess of emotional entanglements, brief mentions of anti-Semitism, quasi-poly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 15:57:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20914724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomTVJunk/pseuds/RandomTVJunk
Summary: Patty contemplates her new life with Stanley and his newfound old friends.





	Changes

Stanley had offered to tell her everything. The nightmares she'd nursed him through the first years of their marriage - moments he said he now understood. Why he'd stopped speaking to her for a full day after the phone call from Mike, a man she'd never heard of. Where, after the week-long trip to see more "old friends" Patty had never heard of, he'd gotten the bruises on his back and the scars on his stomach that still hadn't entirely healed. Why these old friends suddenly visited and called all the time. 

She had told him she didn't need to know, and she didn't. She didn't want to know. If that made her weak, or selfish, she would face her judgment in her last breaths. For now, she was happy to have her husband, safe and alive.

She had her own secrets - the dreams she'd had in the few days before his departure, and still had sometimes since his return, of finding him dead in the bathtub, a bath filled with blood, with letters scrawled on the wall. Letters she forgot every time she woke up.

Stan was a fitful sleeper, prone to using the spare room or the couch. She was relieved, as he was rarely able to see her stir or wake up with a shudder. 

On one of their periodic visits to Atlanta, she woke up in her chair. She hadn't realized she'd called out her husband's name until she saw one of his friends watching her from the couch.

He was Ben - the softest-spoken of the group, along with Mike. He made her a cup of tea and, when she felt comfortable enough to give him vague details, he told her about the 'shared dreams' and how they wouldn't go away, but the pain would lessen because everyone in the group absorbed the same anguish at one point or another. 

She didn't want to ask if that meant she was a part of the group, or if she was just some sort of lucky beneficiary of crippling nightmares because she was married to one. She knew Ben meant well - they all meant well. 

-

"You're a big loser, Peppermint Patty," Richie teased her on another visit. He cut his eyes at Eddie as he shouted the joke about Eddie's mother that even she now knew by heart. 

Eddie threw one of her breadsticks straight at Richie's head. He had a perfect aim and managed a direct hit. 

Richie jumped up, chasing the lankier, slightly shorter man around the kitchen as Stanley shook his head, ignoring them in favor of the soup he was trying to finish making. 

"Tell me, Mr. and Mrs. Uris, why do I love a man who hurts me so???" 

He pulled Eddie in by the waist, smearing breadstick crumbs over his clean pink and white striped shirt and kissing his neck.

"I really fucking hate you right now, Richie. Hate you so damn much," Eddie yelped, even as he leaned into Richie's arms around his waist. 

Patty smiled at their horseplay, something she'd never wanted for herself, but had learned to enjoy watching. 

Stanley's eyes lit up as he caught and shared her smile. He put his ladle down to give a hard stare toward their guests. 

"If you're planning on taking this any further, just go back to the hotel."

Eddie blushed as Richie just rolled his eyes. 

"That's what the kitchen table's for," he groused.

Stan moved his head so that only Patty could see a faint trace of his smirk.

_"Enough. _Get out._"_

Richie threw his hands up in the air.

_"_Enough, I said! I do declare! That is my _final_ word..._Richard and Edward!"_

Patty was impressed by Richie's imitation of her husband's stern tones, enough to play along when Richie looked at her and put a finger to his lips. She saw Eddie simply shake his head in the background as Richie crept up on Stan, dangling a breadstick over the soup pot. 

"_Get the fuck out_," Stan finally said, snapping the breadstick in half and tossing both pieces at a doubled-over-with-laughter Eddie. "You're no better than he is."

"Why does everybody keep throwing food at me???" Eddie whined in Patty's direction. She just shrugged, helping him clean the front of his shirt. 

"She's better than your last wife..." Richie jeered, hands in pockets, before Eddie muttered, "Now that's it," and chased him out the front door and all the way to the car. 

She could still see both men grappling, holding onto each other, and finally, kissing, before they looked around, slight panic on their faces, as if they'd forgotten they were outside, away from safety. 

She knew the feeling, a chill running through her as she remembered the jeers the last time she and Stanley had walked home from services. They'd stopped going soon after.

"Honey?"

She tried to move to better thoughts, to enjoy the feel of his arms over hers, their fingers intertwined.

Stanley kissed her neck, running his free hand along the back of her neck.

"May I - ?"

She nodded.

He let her hair down, quietly chuckling when the blonde locks briefly covered half of his face. 

They were driving away - Richie and Eddie. She was glad they were safe.

"Such assholes," he said, with clear fondness underneath his tense front.

After dinner and dishes, she let herself relax in his touch, his hand on her stomach, her sweater slowly being removed from her shoulders. 

She tried not to think of how only a few months earlier, he'd been so self-conscious about profanity he'd only mutter to himself when he thought she couldn't hear, or of how when he used to hold her, he'd hesitate, as if she would break into a million pieces. Or how when they'd made love, he'd been afraid to truly see her, to fully explore her, or himself, as if someone would come along to punish them both for their sins. 

He was still the man she loved, the man she'd married, still tender and true. He was still her Stanley. 

She just wondered, as she watched him undress, no longer as cautious in letting her see him, know him in every way, if there was a door, a door she would never be able to unlock. And if she could, if she would even want to.

\- 

"We can be very...intense." 

Patty was in the process of trying to eat a salad with Beverly in-between wedding dress shopping.

The practical nature of Patty wondered why a wealthy and successful woman just out of what Stanley had guardedly described as a "troubled marriage" would want to marry again so quickly, even if Ben seemed to be the ideal man. Then she remembered Richie's tearful proposal to Eddie over Christmas, right in the middle of a packed Chinese restaurant, and how Mike and Bill were practically married, in spite of Bill not yet being divorced.

_Live every moment as if it's your last_, she remembered, from the back of some old placemat.

Beverly stopped to look at a photo of the seven of them, taken on Stan's last birdwatching trip. Richie had Eddie in a headlock, most of the others were laughing, and Bill and Stanley had their arms around each other, not quite looking at the camera - almost like they thought it would take their souls. 

She thought of the way the corners of Stanley's eyes tightened, his smile dimming slightly, at any rare mention of Bill's wife. He never looked like that when Bill was with Mike - sitting, laughing, wrestling, kissing. 

She wondered if that was part of the price of being an outsider. If they felt the same way about her and just never told her.

Beverly crunched on a crouton, amused when a lady nearby who wouldn't be amiss on one of those Housewife shows made a face. Her smile faded when she saw how lost in thought Patty was. 

"I hope we don't make you feel uncomfortable. We all love you. We do. You make Stan so happy." 

She took the compliment, as she'd taken Beverly's invitation to be in her wedding party. She didn't think they were trying to make her feel like an outsider. She supposed it was only natural. 

She'd rarely had friends - her best friend was Stanley, and he probably always would be. The rest had been girls who'd pitied her or kept her around to make themselves look better, and Dorothy, who'd moved away when she was 8, never to return, no letters, no calls. 

She'd looked a little like Beverly, actually.

She had no real way of knowing what was or wasn't too much, other than her instincts. And the group had a way of making their intimacy seem easy, fun. Eddie draped over Mike and Bill, letting them massage his temples and tease him about his inhaler. Richie mocking Bill's stutter until Bill would tackle him and tickle him into an apology. Richie, Eddie and Beverly sharing a blanket, laughing as they played footsie to make Ben mock-jealous. 

Even Stanley would go from shouting at Richie over a ratty old board game to letting Richie ruffle his hair, and, on occasion, wrap his arms around Stanley and kiss his neck. Patty thought of the moments alone, because Stanley was still reluctant to show her affection when they weren't alone, when his arms were around her, his mouth against her ear, soft, tired laughter after a long day at work. She knew she should feel jealous, that many would feel jealous, at that level of trust between her husband and someone else, but she trusted Richie - he always tried to make her laugh, make her feel included, even helped them pay down a few of the loans they'd never managed to conquer no matter how many coupons they'd clipped or cords they'd cut.

Richie wasn't who worried her.

Patty's phone beeped, once, twice, then about ten times.

"That's why they call him beep beep Richie," Beverly joked, getting the same slew of photos on her phone. 

The guys had taken Ben to a karaoke bar, knowing he'd enjoy himself in the end, even if they had to make fools of themselves to make it happen. An unofficial stag party for a man who didn't want one. 

Patty and Beverly managed a smile at Richie's "no gurlz allowed" text.

"Think I need a nap anyway." 

Patty's concern was waved off by Beverly insisting she just hadn't had enough rest lately. Patty thought back to the same time, only after her wedding, not before. She'd hoped - and been hopeful enough to tell Stan - that she was pregnant. Instead, she'd just had anemia. She still remembered the solemn look of failure on his face - as if something he'd known about himself had been confirmed. They'd never been able to get pregnant, and had slowly but surely stopped thinking about it. Now that everything was starting to settle financially, she'd thought of asking him again, but -

"I'll pay for this."

Patty trusted Beverly enough to not put on a show of protesting, instead clasping her hand as a silent thank you. 

-

Everyone loved Bill. They teased him, made fun of his books and of his awkwardness and earnestness, his collection of flannel shirts, but they loved him. 

Patty liked him too. She couldn't help liking him - he'd always been unfailingly polite, respectful, and had, in his own, quietly forceful way, had tried as hard as Richie or Beverly to make her feel like one of the group. 

Her resentment of Bill came from behavior she knew he couldn't control. 

The way he watched Stanley when he thought no one could see. 

The way, without realizing, he would clasp Stanley's hand.

The day some idiot in the grocery store had started berating Eddie. Stanley had begun to step in, throwing himself into a fight he wouldn't able to win, until Bill had squeezed his shoulder. Stanley had just...looked at him, sharing a language she could never understand. 

She supposed everyone had crushes, unfulfilled fantasies, but she knew that wasn't the nature of their relationship. A man waiting for his chance.

She knew how often Stanley trained his eyes on Bill, even for just flickers of a moment, any time they were in a room together. She remembered the times Stanley took Bill's hand, and, when Bill became emotional, dried his tears. And how Stanley and Bill took day trips together every few months, reliving old memories and making new ones. 

She trusted her husband, and she trusted Bill. Mike would stay with her on those day trips, a silent reassurance that everything was fine, answers to questions she couldn't bring herself to ask, because to ask them would mean making her fears come to life.

Bill was so affectionate with Mike - goofy and lovestruck, tactile, encouraging his passions and telling everyone every story about Mike in such detail that Richie would literally lie down on the floor and beg him to stop. She knew that couldn't be a lie, or even a self-deception. They were about as genuine as any couple she'd ever seen. 

She just knew, with the group, that sometimes one person was not enough, that love and need were of many, no matter how much effort or decency was deployed. 

One day she came home to find Bill in the guest bedroom, his head buried in Stanley's chest. Stanley was brushing his hair, whispering that everything would be alright, and that he loved him. 

"I love you..._I love you_..."

Mike had told her, in another unanswered question as she'd fumbled with the shopping still in her hands, about Bill's brother Georgie, and how Bill had remembered it was his birthday. 

Patty understood, as she always understood, and did her best to ignore the faint trace of pain in Mike's own soft brown eyes as he went to join them, but all she could think of was when her mother had died, and how Stanley had laid with her in bed, held her to his chest, hands in her hair...telling her how much he loved her. 

A few hours passed until Stan emerged, his brown curls messy and damp, his eyes reddened from crying.

Her heart went out to her husband, in spite of any doubts. He was emotional in a way he hadn't been even when his father had died.

"I want to tell you everything now," he said, holding Patty's hand much the same way he'd held Bill's. 

She didn't want to know, but she knew she had to.

-

Patty didn't understand. 

Patty clung to her husband's arm as he told her every detail, methodical and orderly as he always was, but his voice began to falter with certain memories, memories she now knew he'd lost for nearly 30 years.

He told her of murdered children and alien demonic beings. 

He told her he'd had visions of Bill, and all his other friends, dead, had heard whispers urging him to 'see' that if he was with them they'd never survive. 

He told her they'd killed their childhood bully, brought back to stop them at any cost, and that they'd all do it again if they had to.

She wanted to ask what he'd almost done to avoid being with his friends again, and why he'd mentioned Bill before any of the others in the group. She wanted to ask if killing a man was why he'd changed in so many small little ways, and whether those changes were meant to be good or bad. 

She wanted to pray, but she no longer knew who to pray to or what she would even pray for.

She wanted to ask if he'd only married her because he hadn't been able to remember his past, but she was a logical enough person to realize he may not have ever met her, let alone married her, if he'd been anyone else. To ask would be to make him lie to her, the one thing he'd promised to never do. And if she made him lie to her now, she would question every word, every moment. 

Her wedding ring, the plain silver band Stanley had promised to replace but which she planned to wear for the rest of her life, caught her eye. She nervously twisted the band, not quite knowing what she was doing. 

He looked at her, guilty and not knowing what to say. She sensed he was worried a small gesture was just the beginning of a separation between them.

He leaned across the table, resting his nose against hers, his eyes, soft and kind and yet filled with storms she feared she could no longer navigate. 

"You are the only woman I will ever love," he said, as honest and true as she'd ever heard him. 

Only _woman_, she thought to herself, filled with shame for such basic insecurities after everything he'd just told her. 

He squeezed her hand, not knowing or not caring about the tears beginning to stream down his cheeks.

"If you need time - or space -"

He had so many places to stay now. So many places to stay and so many people to stay with.

Before she could begin to consider a response, there was a click of the locks at the front door. With the way the world was going, she and Stanley had agreed to let his - their - friends have a few spare keys, in case anything ever happened to them. 

One particular friend tended to come and go as he saw fit.

"Hola, amigos!" Richie shouted, always a little too loud, especially when he was nervous. She guessed that the sight before him was enough to make him shout out the windows. 

A yawning Eddie trundled in behind him, carrying an overnight bag bursting at the seams. 

"Told him to leave that shit in the car..."

He bounded over to Stan, kissing his cheek and running his hands through Stan's hair until thick clumps fell into his eyes. 

Patty hadn't realized just how closely she was watching them, imagining them twenty-five, thirty years earlier with the same dynamic, Richie's aggression and Stanley's cold glare in response serving as a mask for how much they cared about each other. She wondered if Stanley shared his fears and dreams with Richie in a way he struggled to with her. She played back the fuzzy details of what he'd told her - of the way Richie had saved them by killing Bowers. Of the way Richie and Eddie had run into each other's arms at the big battle in the sewers, like something from a weepy romance. Of how Richie had held Stan close, keeping him sane when 'It' would make him hallucinate about his parents or about...about her. 

She couldn't look at Richie the same way she had before, and she wasn't very successful at hiding it. 

"Oh, Patty Patty...you _know_, doncha?"

To her surprise, Richie looked pleased, with one of the most genuine smiles she could remember from him. 

"Now you're really one of the Losers, babe." 

Patty began to feel some of her tension over secrets and half-truths fade, as her fears often faded in Richie's presence. 

"Are we...TELLING people now?"

She turned to look at Eddie as he practically yelped the words. He stared at her and gulped an apology. 

"This isn't about you Patty."

She could tell.

"It's just - we - we said we couldn't tell people. If anybody knew - something terrible would happen. We_ swore._" 

Stan put a protective hand on Patty's arm, his smile fading as he shot Eddie a silencing look. 

"Pat isn't people."

She tried to reassure Eddie everything was fine, but she felt shut out of the conversation, as she often did. She glanced at Richie, quickly seeing he was as uneasy as she was. 

"PAT IS PEOPLE..." he shouted in what was a clear attempt at diversion, clasping his hands to his face and doing a mock dramatic voice. "SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! PAT _IS_ _PEOPLE_!!!" 

Stan, head in hands, muttered what sounded like, "Beep beep Richie," under his breath, just enough for Richie to hear. 

Eddie wasn't as diplomatic. 

"Oh just shut the fuck up with your lame-ass _Saturday Night Live_ jokes." 

Richie fumed. 

"They're funny."

Eddie turned to face him, the two of them lost in their own world as they so often were.

"They were NEVER fucking funny. Never!" 

Richie poked Stanley's arm, not knowing or caring how little he wanted to be involved, or that Eddie was too half-asleep to keep the pace going. 

"Tell this dumbass the Stan-the-man-unvarnished truth. You always laughed." 

Eddie put his hands on his hips, head bobbing up and down to where Patty was reminded of a rooster. 

Apparently Richie agreed, as he began to make crowing sounds. Patty struggled to hold in her laugh, not wanting to take sides. 

Stanley stared them both down, clearly running out of patience. 

"You'll wake up the neighbors. You'll wake up Bill."

Eddie pointed, with great emphasis, not realizing how close he was until he accidentally poked Stanley's arm...in the same place Richie had poked it. 

"See? See?"

"Senor," Richie blurted out, and Stan cracked a smile in spite of himself.

Eddie puffed out his cheeks, blowing in frustration.

"You're still doing the same things! You're still being a little bitch -"

Stan threw an arm around Richie's shoulder, a hand over his mouth to stop the snappy response. 

"That's enough, Eddie." 

She tried to say something, anything, before being paralyzed by the fear that they wouldn't hear her even if she screamed.

"Why don't you go check on Bill, Stanley?" was Eddie's next response, spat from his mouth with a pouty petulance closer to a child than an adult. 

There was so much left unsaid, so much that for once Patty nearly asked the questions she always wanted to ask, ask Stanley to tell her what she already knew he felt about his best friend. She looked at him, realizing he was as mad as she'd seen him in a long time, nearly shaking.

Stan began to move toward Eddie, the glint in his normally tranquil eyes enough to lead Richie to push himself in front of him. 

"Eddie, go to sleep."

Eddie was still fuming. 

"This isn't even my goddamn house, Rich. I don't have my pillows, I don't have my mask, I don't - "

Richie tried again, pleading this time. 

"Eds...just go, alright?"

Eddie flipped them off - Patty not knowing whether she was meant to be included or if she was just a bonus - and staggered out of the room. 

Before she could talk to Stanley, Richie had pulled him out onto their small terrace. She could see pointing and dramatic Richie-type whispering, and Stan hugging himself, the way he did when he was his closest to breaking. 

She wanted to join them, but she couldn't bring herself to jump in, to fully be a part of a world she now understood less than ever. Not when she still had the comfort of her own small, mostly safe life, and the last shreds of a husband she wanted to think she still knew. She knew she'd ask him if he would have married her if he hadn't forgotten his friends, forgotten who he was, and she knew the answer would break her heart. 

She turned on her heel at the sound of a noise in her bedroom - _their bedroom,_ she reminded herself. She quickly saw Eddie, shoes and jacket on the floor, jeans halfway down his legs, collapsed on the bed. 

He was yawning, his eyes barely open. She didn't have the heart to tell him this wasn't even the spare room - or that he would have had to have slept on the couch as Bill and Mike were in their spare room. Instead, she fetched a thin blanket, gently laying it over him after he managed to kick his jeans off. 

She picked up his clothes, then turned out most of the lights, only stopping to look at herself in the small mirror she kept beside the door. She took her hair from its messy ponytail, then turned slightly to one side, followed by the other. She expected to see a stranger, some drastic physical change from months of confusion and revelation. Instead, she just saw herself. She wasn't sure whether to be pleased. She noticed how tired she was, confirmed by a sudden yawn that trying to stifle only made worse. 

"Patty?" Eddie said, softly. Of all of them, Eddie sounded the most like a child when he was scared or confused. Eddie and Bill. 

"Sorry," she replied, knowing how silly it was to apologize for making a small noise in your own bedroom, but not being able to stop herself.

She went to check on Stanley and Richie, only to see they were in with Bill and Mike. They were laughing about some story from Derry - another lifetime. In another glance she saw Beverly and Ben on the monitor, part of a Skype call. Beverly called out to her, and even with the grainy connection she saw a look of concern. Concern over Patty being left out, or over her knowing their secrets, or over a million other moments Patty could never imagine. She gave back a friendly greeting, if a bit stiff, hoping that would be enough to not make everyone look at her, worry about her.

Patty joined the men, noticing how terrible Bill still looked, how he sniffled through his laughter, laughed as if every moment of happiness was choked in guilt. She saw that Stanley had his hand on top of Bill's, their fingers intertwined almost as if they didn't even know it. 

"Surprised Eddie isn't asking you to steam press his jacket," Richie tried to joke, stifling a yawn of his own. "Is he...is he mad at me?"

Shaking her head, she reached out to fix his glasses, hanging off his face unnoticed by him through his soft question. He quietly slipped out of the room, raising his eyebrows when she told him where Eddie was. 

"You trying to turn my man straight? I guess if any woman could - " 

Stan broke away from a story with Bev about the time she got her head stuck in a bannister long enough to throw some combination of glower and laughter at Richie. 

"Beep fucking beep, Richie." 

"Never heard that one before, Uris." 

Richie made a few loud snoring sounds before bowing to Patty and leaving the room. 

Patty turned back to Stanley, only to see that Bill had his head resting on his shoulder, other hand now intertwined with Mike's. Bill looked up at Patty, almost apologetically, almost as if he'd forgotten who she was, as Stanley smiled at her, clearly wanting to say something but not knowing what or when or how. 

She said a quick goodbye to Beverly and Ben before going to fix up the futon, not sure if she'd be sleeping on it alone tonight. 

As she dashed into the bedroom to get her and Stanley's favorite blanket - the softest, no matter how many washings, a gift from her parents, baby blue, a hint for the children they'd never managed to have - she noticed Richie wrapped tight around Eddie, his glasses still on. She leaned over to take them off, seeing then that Eddie was still awake - just barely. 

"Can't sleep without him," Eddie muttered, annoyed but fond as he looked down at Richie's big hand on his hip. He turned more serious as he tried to focus on Patty in the dim nightlight. "You must really hate us." 

Before she could say anything, he continued. 

"You don't know us, and we're all over your home...even your bed...and all over Stan..." 

He paused at the sound of Mike, Stan and Bill bickering in the other room. 

"I forgot everybody. I even forgot -" his eyes welled up briefly as a sleeping Richie nuzzled his neck. "So when I'm with these guys, I just...it's like I'm a damn kid again. I never knew anybody as what we are now. So what I said earlier, about Stan and Bill - that's just the shit I used to say to push Stan's buttons. He loves Bill. We all love Bill. But he -"

Eddie reached out to run his finger across the top of her hand. 

"He loves you so much, Patty. When we were back in Derry, we all got drunk that first night, and he just couldn't stop telling us how funny and perfect you are. I don't know if he can tell you that - but he does. Back then, he always felt left out; even when he didn't wanna tell us, we knew. You're the one, Patty. You're the one he didn't have back then. He was waiting for you."

He yawned again, distracting him enough to where he couldn't see the tears in her eyes.

"We all love you. You've put up with so much shit and you don't even know us. I hope you know we..."

She leaned down to kiss his forehead, taking in how innocent he looked, the way they all looked, as if he was waiting for her to hurt him the way he'd been so badly hurt before. 

"I love you too, Eds," she whispered, putting a finger to his lips as she left the room, seeing him smile contentedly as Richie pulled him in tighter. 

\- 

"P-Patty?"

Patty lurched from the couch a bit too fast, logic book falling from her lap and into the floor. 

She wiped her eyes and saw Bill, wearing just his boxers and a baggy T-shirt she assumed was Mike's, picking the book up for her. 

"Just wanted to make sure..."

She nodded, wondering if they were always like this. Worried that any moment of peace was a trap, or the moment before death. 

She brushed past him, getting some water from the kitchen. She knew he was trying to talk to her, and she wasn't trying to ignore him, but she was exhausted, and she didn't want to say anything she'd regret. Hurt him any more than he'd already been hurt. 

There was a long pause, so long the sounds of water dripping from the faucet that never stayed fixed were all she heard. She secretly, shamefully hoped if she stayed still long enough, he would leave.

"P-please don't hate me."

She turned to look at him, only now seeing that he was trembling, that his bloodshot eyes betrayed how long he'd been without sleep. She'd been so focused on seeing him through her husband that she hadn't let herself take a look at the actual man. His frailty and the glimmers of strength he was trying to find, through his friends. Through Stanley. And right now, through her. 

She found herself holding Bill, his full-body sobs shaking through her shoulder as he hugged her tight. She rubbed the back of his head, whispering the same silent prayer her mother had taught her what felt like a long time ago, waiting for him to slowly calm his breathing. 

Her fingers curled in his greying hair, she saw Mike and Stanley staring at them. Stanley smiled at her, eyes nearly as wet as Bill's, and her own. Showing the love she knew was real, was special to her and for her, was their own. 

She moved Bill into Stanley's arms, both men surprised by the gesture, almost as surprised as Patty herself, but the moment was one of trust, and they trusted her in return, with Stanley briefly kissing her fingertips before she moved away. 

Bill's hands brushed Stanley's dark curls, his head now heavy on the familiar shoulder.

Patty let herself rest her head on Mike's strong shoulder, sharing a brief look with him. 

"I love you," Stanley murmured into Bill's ear, staring right at Patty as he said the words. 

"I love you, too," Patty replied, in time with Bill. 

She settled further into Mike's chest, drowsy, letting him keep her safe. 

For the first time, she began to understand that safety was enough. 


End file.
